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Apple A8X IPad Air 2 Processor Packs Triple-Core CPU, Hefty Graphics Punch
MojoKid writes When Apple debuted its A8 SoC, it proved to be a modest tweak of the original A7. Despite packing double the transistors and an improved GPU, the heart of the A8 SoC is the same dual-core Apple "Cyclone" processor tweaked to run at higher clock speeds and with stronger total GPU performance. Given this, many expected that the Apple A8X would be cut from similar cloth — a higher clock speed, perhaps, and a larger GPU, but not much more than that. It appears those projections were wrong. The Apple A8X chip is a triple-core variant of the A8, with a higher clock speed (1.5GHz vs. 1.4GHz), a larger L2 cache (2MB, up from 1MB) and 2GB of external DDR3. It also uses an internal metal heatspreader, which the Apple A8 eschews. All of this points to slightly higher power consumption for the core, but also to dramatically increased performance. The new A8X is a significant power house in multiple types of workloads; in fact, its the top-performing mobile device on Geekbench by a wide margin. Gaming benchmarks are equally impressive. The iPad Air 2 nudges out Nvidia's Shield in GFXBench's Manhattan offscreen test, at 32.4fps to 31 fps. Onscreen favors the NV solution thanks to its lower-resolution screen, but the Nvidia device does take 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited by a wide margin, clocking in at 30,970 compared to 21,659.
The new Mac Mini is twice as slow as the late 2012 model. So fuck you Apple.
The new iOS 8 makes older iPhones slow and dysfunctional. So fuck you Apple.
Fuck you Apple.
I heard it from a Repubican. Must be true.
Capthca: retard
Does this mean my cat videos will load faster?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The iPad isn't used for number-crunching. It's not a high-end gaming platform - it certainly has a lot of games, but few of them are graphically demanding. It's used for a little light content creation, but nothing more than timeline video editing - not real time effects composition or rendering. Mostly it's used for document viewing and web browsing. So long as it's got enough power to comfortably decode video (And it has hardware h264 acceleration anyway), why would you need to worry about just how much?
But it's ideal for padholes who want to have warm winter evenings!
Did you know that if you insert an iPad into your asshole you gain wisdom?
Per the Geekbench 3 CPU benchmark suite, the A8X scores ~4500.
The Surface Pro hybrid laptop's i3 scores 4750.
Apple's base model MacBook Air's i7 scores 5300.
(and for reference, the old Core 2 Quad Q6600 scores 4250.)
Meanwhile, the Intel chips in the Surface Pro and MacBook Air have a 15W TDP, while the A8X should be well south of 5W. Granted, a lot of that goes to the integrated GPUs, but the A8X is no slouch in graphics either. The iPad runs at a higher resolution than 90-plus-percent of PCs today and runs plenty of good-looking 3D games. It's good enough for consumer use, definitely.
Finally, Intel's 'recommended customer price' for their ULV chips is ~$300. Major purchasers like Apple and Microsoft no doubt negotiate a substantial discount, but I doubt it comes close to the ~$20 (plus in-house design costs) Apple pays for the A-series chips.
This may sound like an Apple fanboy post, but it isn't. It's a 'Intel needs to get their shit together' post. A decade ago Intel lost their way with the Pentium 4 and AMD took the lead for a few years. In the end that gave us the vastly improved Core architecture. If Broadwell and Skylake don't put Intel out ahead of ARM designs in a hurry, the next few years could be very interesting.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Intel processors crush ARM crap in all tests. They are more power efficient too doing real work.
The only people that give a flying fuck about apple here on Slashdot are poser hipster reject techs....in other words, over 80% of the world could give two shits less about apple and whatever they're trying to market next as the next best thing.
Love my iPad air 2 it's an awesome bit of hardware .